Bringing Humanoids into Daily Use: Yuli (Galbot)
Chief Strategy Officer @ Galbot
Galbot reached US$1B valuation just two years after its founding, and is now one of the leading humanoid robotics companies globally. Chief Strategy Officer, Yuli Zhao, focuses on building humanoid robots deployed in real-world scenarios - from pharmacies and malls to industrial lines.
Galbot’s story is about taking robotics out of the lab and into daily life, and this conversation explores how the company is commercializing humanoids at scale, why retail was chosen first, and how data - not hardware alone - will define defensibility in this new era.
Q: You started your career in consulting and gaming. How did that journey lead you to humanoid robotics?
Yuli: I began at McKinsey almost 20 years ago, where I learned the discipline of problem-solving and long-term strategy design. But there’s a saying in consulting: you are often the “kingmaker,” not the king. I wanted to be directly responsible for execution. That led me to Qihoo 360, where I founded the strategy department and worked closely with the CEO to develop monetization plans for a user base of over 600 million. Out of that work came a bold idea: building a gaming business. Despite initial skepticism, we launched Qihoo’s mobile gaming unit and pioneered publishing models that generated huge growth.
Later, at Yoozoo Interactive, I scaled their corporate development and expanded globally — opening teams in Japan, Europe, and China. I saw firsthand how marketing, branding, and user engagement could make or break new products. This shaped my belief that technology alone isn’t enough. For robots to enter daily life, they must deliver clear value, be easy to adopt, and connect with end-users in meaningful ways. That blend of strategy and execution is what I bring now to Galbot.
Q: Galbot has made headlines for opening humanoid-run pharmacies in Beijing. How are you approaching commercialization?
Yuli: Commercialization has to start with solving real problems. In Beijing, we now operate over 10 intelligent pharmacies that run entirely on our humanoid Gilbert G1. These stores are open 24/7, with uptime above 97%, and require minimal human oversight - one technician can remotely monitor three stores simultaneously. For consumers, this means they can get urgent medicines overnight without waiting for a store to open or depending on overworked staff. For store owners, it means lower labor costs and a sustainable 24-hour business model.
We are expanding beyond pharmacies into malls in South China, with plans to reach 100 stores across 10 cities this year. Each deployment gives us not just revenue but also invaluable operational data. It’s proof that humanoids are not just for demos - they can deliver ROI in everyday commercial life.
Q: Why start with retail, rather than industrial or logistics use cases?
Yuli: We looked at two things: demand and foundational skills. Demand-wise, retail - especially pharmacies - is a sector where human limitations are clear. Running overnight shifts in tiny, crowded spaces is costly and unattractive for employees. A humanoid can operate continuously in spaces with 5,000–6,000 SKUs packed into 30 square meters, where it would be overwhelming for a person.
On skills, grasping is fundamental. Around 80% of useful work in the real world comes down to picking up and placing objects. By focusing on retail, we built and trained our first foundation model, GraspVLA, which uses billions of simulated and real-world datasets. This gave us a platform capability - grasping, sorting, stocking - that can later extend into logistics and industrial use cases. Retail is not just a business choice, it’s a proving ground for humanoid fundamentals.
It’s also important to emphasize that we are not limited to retail. Galbot has established deep collaborations with approximately two-thirds of the leading automotive enterprises in China. These partnerships cover SPS sorting, automated quality inspection, and tote transportation. In this sense, retail was only part of our proving ground, with automotive and broader industrial applications are already a major part of our commercialization journey.
Q: Hardware often gets commoditized over time. How do you think about defensibility for humanoids?
Yuli: Our moat will not come from the physical form of the robot alone. Defensibility comes from data and embodied intelligence. Unlike language models, which can train on billions of free internet tokens, humanoid AI requires 3D spatial and trajectory data. That data is expensive, slow to collect, and critical for performance.
If you hire 40 operators to telecontrol robots for a month, you may only gather 100,000 data samples - far short of the 10 billion needed for robust intelligence. Galbot solved this by building a proprietary simulator that models thousands of objects, human-like movements, and interactions. We have already accumulated over 10 billion synthetic datasets, which we then fine-tune with real-world deployment data from pharmacies and manufacturing sites. This hybrid approach gives us scale and accuracy that few others can replicate, creating a durable moat.
In addition, we have formed a strategic joint venture with Bosch Group and are industrializing embodied AI within SPS production lines, further strengthening our defensibility and accelerating real-world adoption.
Q: Many robotics companies build purpose-specific machines. Why did Galbot focus on humanoids?
Yuli: Purpose-built robots dominate today’s factories, but they are rigid and costly to update. If a product line changes, companies must rewrite code and reconfigure machines - a huge reinvestment. Humanoids, by contrast, are flexible. Updating the AI model is far simpler than redesigning hardware. That flexibility is the future of manufacturing.
There’s also a practical reason: workspaces are designed for humans. A humanoid fits into the same environment without costly retrofitting. Our Gilbert G1 is 1.8 meters tall, with arms that extend to 2.4 meters, allowing it to operate in human-designed environments. It runs for 8 hours per charge, compared to many humanoids that last only one hour before overheating. We intentionally designed it with wheels instead of legs for stability and endurance, but we are also developing a dual-leg model for the longer-term vision of AGI-level robots.
In short, humanoids offer immediate practicality and long-term adaptability. That’s why Galbot is investing here rather than in single-purpose machines.